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FRONT PAGE CONTRIBUTOR

Minority groups puncture the Net Neutrality balloon

The Democrat coalition may be fracturing more visibly along abortion lines in the Obamacare debate, but that’s not the only popcorn-friendly battle going on right now. ‘Minority’ groups are going after Net Neutrality now, and nobody is sparing the ‘race card.’

The leaders of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, National Organization of Black Elected Legislative Women, The National Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials, and the National Association of Black County Officials wrote a letter to David Honig of the Broadband Opportunity Coalition praising the group for its position against Net Neutrality. The BOC is a group focused on getting high-quality Internet access available to more Americans, and the BOC has not lined up in favor of the Google-Obama Net Neutrality scam. That is why the above groups support of the BOC, because the plan will harm the very expansion of Internet capacity and deployment that the group was formed to promote.

So naturally, pro-Net Neutrality groups came out and gave reasoned responses… no sorry, I don’t know what came over me. That’s not what happened at all. These Democrat-dominated groups were accused of being bought shills for telecommuncations firms!

Ready the popcorn. These ‘black’ groups have called that a racist accusation. Apparently it is racist and ‘paternalistic’ to say that they are incapable of having opinions of their own, but are merely puppets of some corporate masters. I suppose the telecommuncations firms are ‘white’ in Democrat-speak. But regardless, Multichannel News describes some good fun for us on the right to watch:

Some fans of network neutrality countered that the groups were under the influence of cable and telco operators, leading to some heated exchanges, calls for apologies, and charges of racism and paternalism.

“In publicly attacking several of the nation’s leading civil rights organizations, one organization recently published a statement that minorities – blacks, Hispanics and even Asians’ are supporting points of view that hurt the people they claim to represent. Other organizations have regularly peddled these and other offensive claims to the news media and public via Web posting,” wrote the officials.

They branded the attackers digital elites who wanted high-speed broadband for their personal enjoyment. “Many feel that these organizations are pushing a regulatory perspective that would regressively shift the costs of bandwidth onto middle- and low-income consumers,” they said. “We urge you to ignore the destructive racial rhetoric peddled by elite digital organizations…”

The ‘black’ groups got two things right, though: First, it is the Internet firms that are rich and powerful here, not the telecommuncations firms. Second, the technologists pushing the Obama-Google Single Payer Internet plans really do want their intensive, high-bandwidth, low-latency Internet use subsidized by everyone else, including the urban poor.

Opposing Net Neutrality is the bipartisan, mainstream position. The only people who support it are big Internet firms, freeloaders downloading movies and video games from the Pirate Bay, and socialists who want to nationalize the Internet.